Cell Phone App Convenience Is Not A Strategy

I was in Barnes & Noble the other week shopping for books. Not a big deal, but I also have a Kindle and are an Amazon Prime member. Yes, there are some real paper books that don’t come on e-readers but that wasn’t the nature of my browsing.

I was interested in science fiction or a mystery, just kind of felt it after reading Moby Dick. As I had 30 minutes to kill before seeing Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, I decided to browse. I saw a book by Henning Mankell. It sounded interesting. So I scanned the bar code with my Droid cell phone’s bar scanner and emailed the title to my RemembertheMilk.com task reminder account. There was Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Scan, click, email. Now I had two new books on my reading list.

I felt bad for Barnes & Noble. They were providing me with a very pleasant in-store browsing shopping experience but they weren’t going to receive any of my commerce that day.

So what do you make of cell phone retailer buying applications? It is great if you are in Bloomingdale’s and they don’t have your size. You scan the bar code, go to the store’s web site and order the size you want while you are right in the store. The New York Times notes that Wal-Mart, Disney, Kerr Drug and Crate & Barrel are testing this technology.

IBM has developed Presence that detects the “presence” of signed-up shoppers as soon as they enter a store, which allows the store to immediately send promotions to their cell phone. Cisco has Mobile Concierge that allows you to locate items within a given store, a must-have app if you are browsing in a Wal-Mart Super-Center or a Target. And Motorola is developing a cell phone app that puts a net-connected loyalty card on your cell phone.

All these technologies are wonderful. They make the shopping experience easier and hopefully increase a customer’s shopping basket. And they well may do so, but only to a limited point.

As David Ogilvy rightly once said, convenience is not a strategy.

Consumers have to want the product first. They have to appreciate its features and benefits and recognize the value. And then they will buy.

A product’s sales can increase when you make the buying experience easier, provide more information about the product itself and facilitate the actual purchase process.

Just like that old promotional truism of placing a product at eye level on a store shelf does.

But ultimately that does not make a product winner.

That’s why understanding and identifying the real consumer insight is so important. Technology itself is not the end; it is one element of the means. And it cannot replace the fundamental basics of sound product development.

Now, excuse me, I have to go to a friend’s house for dinner and I don’t know which wine to bring so I am going to scan some bar codes on my cell phone at Zachys liquor store.